Republicans: It's the Right Thing'

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"I am focused completely on the 1962 election in New York State," he says.

"This year is going to determine a great deal in both parties for the future." His brown hair is greying and his wrinkles are deeper, but he still exudes vigor — particularly when he is among the voters.

The sheer act of campaigning nourishes Rockefeller as it does few other leading U.S. politicians.

The Right Kind of Corn. On the stump, he pumps hands, slaps backs, signs auto graphs and shouts greetings — "Hi sweetie . . . wonderful to be here . . . this is very exciting . . . thanks a thousand." His campaign speeches are repetitious and full of homilies, but they drum home the watchwords of his administration: fiscal integrity, pay-as-you-go, schools, jobs, housing, equal opportunity. When in the midst of crowds, he winks, grins, furrows his brow in endless contortions, seeming to say to perfect strangers: "I'm with you. I understand. You've gotten through to me." Recently, he donned a cowboy hat and climbed on a stagecoach to drive it a few miles, sheared a sheep, picked up some worms and handed them to giggling girls after breaking ground for a factory.

He gets in a few words of his fluent Spanish whenever he can find a single Spanish-speaking voter in his audience.

It is all kind of corny — but it is the corniness that has given Nelson Rocke feller an enviable political charisma..

Array of Power. As a candidate, Nelson Rockefeller has at his fingertips an array of power and talent that few politicians in the land can boast. His personal fortune is estimated at between $100 million and $200 million (it would, wags say, make Jack Kennedy the poor man's candidate in any race with Rockefeller).

Like Kennedy, he has his own private airplane (a Convair) for campaigning. He has homes in Manhattan (his ex-wife has taken over their Fifth Avenue apartment, and he now shares the penthouse apartment of Brother Laurance), in Washington, in Maine, in Venezuela and near Tarry town, N.Y., where his family estate at Pocantico Hills spreads over 3,000 acres.